Loren Connors during sound check at Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, June 1, 2007. Photo by Yuko Zama.

Hijokaidan & Akira Sakata live at Akihabara GoodMan, Feb. 2, 2013. Sakata-san turned 68 on Feb. 21st and he breathes more fire and life than anyone we know. Photo by Yuko Under. 

Oh yeah, Thursday Feb. 21 in San Francisco, it's these two for one night only on the skins n' strings: 8 p.m. at The Lab. 

Our best pals at Magnetic South studio/label in Bloomington released two amazing records this month, debut LP of Thee Open Sex and Circuit Des Yeux 10-inch. Outside of an Apache Dropout 45, the studio has released a ton of cassettes from Southern Indiana bands and assorted mix tapes of lost/found singles -- yet these sides are their first majorly distributed statments. Thee Open Sex somehow mash Popul Vu trance and Iggy Pop fatalism. It's a bizarre, heavy rock record that we've been playing non-stop lately. Fab cover art comes via Mad Monk and Xerox the Kid. Check 'em out.

Yeah, you've seen it on the yooo toobes. Roky Erickson, Tommy Hall and the boys managed to get on Dick Clark’s teevee show American Bandstand in 1965. Clark asks the young Rocky who’s the head of this band?

“We’re all heads, Dick.”

If you felt Apache Dropout got a little too candy-high on last year's Bubblegum Graveyard (they didn't) then you got to sink into the sorta-new Magnetic Heads LP. This is a collection of the groups first recordings, originally released on the Magnetic South label -- Cha Cha Cha in 2008 and Lysergic Caveman Choogle in 2009. Remastered from the tapes and cut to vinyl, you'll find the electric fiddle was the prime instrument in the early days. 548 copies and out Feb. 5.